Canadian Geek Bands Join CBC Searchlight and They Need Your Votes!
Recently, CBC Music launched their Searchlight contest in which independent Canadian artists get the chance to showcase their work and become the next big musician of Canada. They more than likely expected the usual plethora of indie, country, folk, rock, and…whatever new fangled genre kids are listening to these days.
What they probably didn’t expect was an entire geek music movement.
It seems a group of Canadian geek bands (consisting of Debs & Errol, Copy Red Leader, Kari Maaren, The Blast Processors and Press Start 2 Play) have joined together to enter the Searchlight contest and take it over with all things geek. They have launched their own contest, created their own memes, and even used a unique hashtag (#VoteGeek) with which to spam twitter.
But their aim is not to win. With over 4,500 entries, the chances of winning are pretty slim. Instead, the rag-tag team have a far more important, nay, noble cause: to bring awareness to the geek music genre as a whole. And to do this they need your votes…and your tweets…and your Facebook shares…And…actually, watch this video, it explains it all.
Geek culture has become far more mainstream in the last few years, but geek music has been a bit more difficult to define since it does not adhere to one specific style. Instead, it focuses on content.
“From our perspective, geek music is anything that embraces, promotes and/or addresses concepts that are niche, weird or under-represented. We sing about SEGA games of the 90’s, Copy Red Leader sing about Star Wars and The Princess Bride, and Debs & Errol sing about everything from narwhals to Lord of the Rings. It’s occasionally humorous, almost always referential, and comes from a place of reverence for the things that we love that bring us together.” (The Blast Processors)
Most people who know geek music will immediately think of Jonathan Coulton, Paul & Storm, and the Doubleclicks. But there’s a whole pool of geeky Canadian talent that has yet to be truly exploited.
“We hope that more people, in fact more geeks, will know that there are also Canadian geek bands! We have run into a number of people that have said, ‘How come I didn’t know you existed?’ And we don’t know! We are trying as hard as we can to make sure our audience finds us. Hopefully, if we can raise the profile of geek music in Canada, then those people can find us!” (Debs & Errol)
The contest has just under one week left for the first phase of voting. One look at CBC’s twitter feed should give an indication at just how hard these geeks are working to make themselves heard. It’s pretty impressive especially considering that no one in the group expects to win. But again, that’s not the purpose here.
“There’s a lot of freedom in not trying to win. It’s possible we’re coming across as the court jesters of the Canadian music scene, and I’m pretty sure Errol is seriously alarming the CBC people with his relentless stalking techniques, but one thing we’re doing is demonstrating the weird creativity of geek culture, if only via Errol’s endless stream of memes and the way we have altered the CBC Searchlight banner for our own purposes. My favourite aspect of the contest is that we’re all promoting each other. This saves us from the stress of self-promotion; we can trick ourselves into believing we’re in it to promote everybody else instead.” (Kari Maaren)
And promoting geek music is not the only opportunity the bands have been given.
“We love how current technology lets us participate in the Searchlight event… not just as a contributor, but also as a listener. Hearing such diverse music from ALL across Canada is amazing. The CBC website has given us access to unique songs in a way that was impossible before the internet. Each listener is gaining insight and exposure to the style and message of music from practically every corner. It is encouraging… everyone has already won.” (Copy Red Leader)
So if you have a spare moment during the day, vote for these fantastically talented geek bands! And then share it through social media for the chance to win prizes! Your vote will help Canada become a geekier paradise!
